The tl;dr version: privacy feature offers significant benefits for heads-up displays. Additionally, it addresses security concerns for AR and smart glasses.
NextGen Nano has developed an advanced version of a transparent OLED (TOLED) display with a privacy feature that enables single-sided viewing, creating new applications across various industries. The technology, which is a variant of OLED, eliminates the need for a backlight and allows for interactive display applications. This breakthrough has been achieved by suppressing the light emitted from the top electrode while maximizing the light emitted from the bottom electrode. The NextGen Nano team claim to have achieved bottom-to-top emission ratios as high as ten, allowing one-sided emission.
“This means the light emitted from the bottom electrode is ten times higher than the top, making one-sided emission possible. Our next task is to further enhance the emission ratio by directionally extracting trapped modes from the bottom electrode,” said Dr. Hossein Ardekani, research scientist at NextGen Nano.
TOLED technology uses self-illuminating LEDs to project an image, eliminating the need for a backlight. TOLED screens can be employed in interactive display applications, allowing users to see through the opposite side of the screen. Potential uses for this technology range from architectural windows in smart homes to heads-up displays in airplane cockpits and self-driving cars. Traditional TOLED displays consist exclusively of transparent components, including a substrate, cathode, and anode, allowing light to pass in both directions. As a result, any displayed images or text can be viewed from both sides.
